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Actual Costs
Content: Costs; Actual and Hidden, Monthly Payments vs. Purchase Price
The Actual Costs of owning a home are the Monthly Payments.
Not necessarily the Purchase Price.
Actual Costs = Monthly Costs + Hidden Costs
Somebody or something somewhere, is paying the price for the Hidden Costs of our dirty energy use.
- Nuclear Waste, accidents and risk of disaster.
- Burning Coal; pollution of air, soil, and water .
- Mountaintop Removal; disasters done on purpose.
- Coal ash/oil spills disaster done by accident.
- Hydrofracking for Natural Gas; responsible for contamination and destruction of ground water.
We pay more than once for the energy we buy.
Save Money: Reduce Monthly Payments
It is a misconception that the more we reduce a building's environmental footprint, the more money we have to spend. While it is true that many green building practices require more hard earned dollars, the best options will actually save money from the very first month, which also reduces Hidden Costs in the most affordable and effective way possible.
Payback is one way of looking at an energy investment. Example: If one spends 30k dollars on a PV solar system, how many months or years will it take to make that money back in lower, monthly energy bills after incentives?
There are some serious flaws to using a simple payback approach:
1. Most people finance, which changes the initial purchase price into monthly, mortgage payments.
2. Monthly, energy bills are always rising and increasingly unstable making future calculations a guess.
3. Payback does not account for the millions of hidden costs associated with nuclear and fossil fuel use and dependency.
4. Many energy efficient upgrades can increase comfort and indoor air quality which is tough to include in simple payback calculations.
Purchase Price versus Monthly Payments
People buying new homes are usually not paying the purchase price. Mortgage Payments + Energy/Utility Payments are the actual costs we pay to live in a home. The best investments add little to your mortgage payment, but affordably cut energy expenses in half, saving money from the first month of occupancy.
This investment adds value every month and exponentially increases as energy costs rise.
Be Green, invest in yourself.
- The best investment in our climate is always an air-tight, continuously-insulated building envelope which increases energy efficiency more than any current building method while also increasing comfort and indoor air quality.
- Heating/cooling systems
- Water heating
- Lighting and Appliances
- Money spent in these areas can increase monthly-mortgage payments slightly, but will dramatically reduce monthly-energy bills.
- These investments also represent getting healthier indoor air, having a more comfortable dwelling and reducing millions of hidden costs.
- Financing offers you the ability to own a home. It also offers an opportunity to save a lot of money on Monthly Payments.
Building Envelope and space conditioning investments outperform almost any other investments and dramatically reduce social and environmental costs.
Mortgage + Monthly Energy Bills = Actual Cost of Home
Example:
Conventionally built green home
$950 + $100 = $1050
Passive Solar, green home with high-perfomance envelope
$960 + $55 = $1015
The slightly more expensive home would actually be 35 dollars cheaper in the first month multiplied by coming months and rising energy costs. It would also be more comfortable, better protected from rising energy costs, safe in a winter power outage, and would enjoy a probable, higher re-sale value with less days on the market. With close to half the energy costs of the other green home, it would arguably reduce social and environmental costs twice as much.
Visit Hidden Costs of a Home's Energy Use to learn more about the environmental and societal impacts of our homes and buildings energy use or visit our Asheville Home Builder page to check out our building services.
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